The question of which is the best browser on the market is a highly debated one. Many people have never given a second thought about what they are using in their daily web activities and especially why.

A little history (The “why” part)

For many years there wasn’t a real alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It came onboard with Microsoft’s popular operating system Windows, it was easy to use, and people didn’t have problems with it apart from the occasional crashes (which were a common thing among Redmond’s products).

But somewhere along the way, things changed, viruses and spyware started spreading like wildfire throughout the Internet and computers, and the main culprit for it was IE. Why? Because it had massive security holes and Microsoft couldn’t fix them as fast as they were found and exploited.

At this moment people became aware that Microsoft wasn’t the only competitor in the browser business and that companies like Opera Software and Mozilla Foundation were in the same race too.

The “what” part

The biggest hit at this moment is the popular Firefox. It has a big edge over its rival from Microsoft (apart for the nearly 150 million downloads). The main advantage is Tabbed Browsing which allows users to open multiple sites without opening multiple browser windows thus making your life much more easier. Although Microsoft promised Tabbed Browsing with its next generation IE7, it is still in its beta version, and for the moment isn’t a viable contender for Firefox.

Another big feature of Firefox is its flexibility through the use of extensions and themes.

Extensions allow you to install only the features that you want and need. Extensions vary in purpose anywhere from popup and script blockers to weather forcasting and mp3 music players. Thus through themes and extensions the way Firefox looks and works is under your control.

An additional bonus witch comes with Firefox is faster browsing due to improvements to the engine that powers Firefox, which can be tuned further with great success by an extension called FasterFox.

One more proof of its overall quality is the numerous awards won so far from prestigious websites and magazines.

Conclusion

It is clear that Firefox is amongst the biggest successes of the open source community, so if you are among those who still use Internet Explorer, I hope this article made you think twice about using it. If you don't know where you can get Firefox just click on the link below: